A Zambian Midwife and the baby bundle in Chipata >>>
In my last week here I have been reading a copy of Ina Mae Gaskins Spiritual Midwifery from 1977. This book is groovy in the true Simon and Garfunkel late 1960’s sort of way. Besides being an integral component of the midwifery cannon of literature, it is a fierce, if not dated, reminder of the potential pleasures of having a baby – and the essential role that trust, sensuality, and surrender has in birthing.
During a presentation I made, I talked about the ubiquitous ‘baby bundle’ – as I call it. After the baby is born, it is whisked away and wrapped in a cloth diaper, then a towel, then a crocheted blanket, then a huge fuzzy adult size blanket – so it looks like an overstuffed burrito baby – which is so large in diameter that it is tough for two adult arms to completely wrap around it. I talked about how that baby bundle reduces any skin-to-skin contact that the mother-baby pair gets, and I included in my list of recommendations that more emphasis be put on the importance of skin-to-skin contact in the hours following birth.
After the presentation, an American woman expressed her dismay in this reduced skin-to-skin time due to the baby-bundle, to which her Zambian colleague responded "everyone in this room was born into a baby bundle. We all survived." Which is true. It’s a good point. And it calls into question that, which I think, from my midwifery background, is ‘essential.’
So what is the answer? Should each clinic around the world strive to create the groovy experiences as Ina Mae and her team does? Or should it be a strictly safely first approach? Or is it an obvious combination of the two that is important?
It is this question of mother-friendly services that brought me into midwifery in the first place, back in 2002 in Tanzaniza, inspired by Mary Kroeger. I think it is this question that will keep me active and passionate about this profession. I think one thing is clear – there is no harm in providing mother-friendly-fulfilling birth experiences. So why not include it? We could all use a bit more Ina Mae.
Excerpt from blog 8/15/08 - Rosha Forman
